Oil and Gas in Wyoming’s Red Desert

For over 20 years, students and instructors alike on NOLS Wilderness Horsepacking courses have relished their time in the Honeycomb Buttes, a hidden gem in Wyoming’s Red Desert. The labyrinthine sandstone formations, which resemble the striking desert landscape of Southern Utah, are riddled with fossilized turtle shells and petrified palm trees. The Bureau of Land Management has protected some of the most pristine country in the area by designating several Wilderness Study Areas. The corridors between these areas, however, enjoy no such safeguards.

These corridors recently showed up on the BLM’s auction block, with approximately 13 square miles of public lands near the Honeycomb Buttes being offered for oil and gas development as part of a much larger lease sale. These controversial leases had the potential to significantly impact a key NOLS classroom, with one lease overlapping an important horse camp and good water source, and many other leases impeding horseback travel in the surrounding lands. In an effort to defend these critical travel corridors, NOLS partnered with High, Wild & Lonesome Horseback Adventures and filed a protest against the leases on January 20, 2009.

Less than a month later, on February 2nd, the Bureau of Land Management opted to defer each of the protested leases, and many others in sensitive parts of the state. Deferring these leases is a victory for the NOLS classroom, and an important step toward achieving land use balance.

photo courtesy of PeeBee van den Toorn